The picture was sent to me by my mom at a rather inopportune moment; in that I was on a rock climbing wall, two-meters off the ground and it drove me to near tears. It was blurry, as if the camera was on a pixel-budget, but I didn’t need 20x20 vision to know, understand and remember what was happening in that picture.

I stood against a clear, cream backdrop that sometimes doubled as our garage wall if mom decided to put her new camera down at any point. The smell of the grass is still beneath me and the plants and foliage is still behind me, still wet with the morning dew and snail mucus since it rained the night before. My school back-pack was heavy with new books and stationary that I was itching to try out. My uniform was ironed, socks pulled up to my knees for some unfathomable reason and the cast on my left arm was yet unsigned. My hair was neat and combed, which is a rarity even today, and I had the most ridiculous smile on my face that seemed designed to highlight my chins. Certain things never change. To my far right was my sister, wearing her uniform for the first time ever, hair in neat pigtails, with a red back-pack the size of her torso. Her dress was the colour of fresh salmon and I remember her barely able to stand still, which caused multiple curses and moans from my mother behind the camera. Between the two of us was my dad, head and face freshly shaven, work clothes neat and ironed as always, smiling – sort of, I do remember him smiling more – not at the camera but at my mother behind the camera, silently beaming with pride at his two kids flanking him.

When I look back at this 11-year-old photo, memories like race cars rush towards me. To my left, behind the photo-bombing tree, was my “secret hideout”; the secret hideout being a hole in the foliage barely big enough for myself, a blanket, a pillow and whatever books I decided to take with me that day. It provided enough cover for me to grab everything and run back to safety if it started raining, but not too much that it kept the sunlight out on a sunny day. Hours would be spent underneath there or until I finished my book or got tired of sticks, stones and dirt. Little did I know how much it protected me from the more depressing reality. I had no idea how close to broke my family was, how hard my parents were working to keep the roof over our heads, how close we were to having to move out anyway because the lease was expiring, how my dad would spend long nights agonizing over budgets and statements, just trying to keep our collective heads above water. No one knew that Morgan had ADHD and a thyroid disorder that would costs thousands in medication for the rest of her life. No one knew the hardships to come. And yet here we are; two proud parents and two children who could not wait to go back to school.

Those poor fools.